Hahahahaha not at all. I’m barely picking anything up but I was watching Doraemon and I was only getting the same 30% of the words so I just decided that if I powered through Gintama I might end up picking up more. I’m about 30-40 episodes in because I skipped around and boy has it not made any difference.

I actually recommend this podcast. I found it when I first started learning Japanese by using Google Translate to look up “Pokemon podcast” and clicked the first result. I liked it even though I didn’t understand anything so I watched another episode and that’s where I found out that not only is it not a Pokemon podcast (they only did one Pokémon episode), it’s called the Badonkadonk podcast and the dude is from the US and starts every episode off by saying Daaaaayyyuummmmm that’s a badonkadonk! before continuing the podcast in mostly Japanese. Over time the intro has turned into him referencing song pop culture but replacing words or actions with badonkadonk and the woman tries to guess the reference.

It’s great because his Japanese is more basic, he randomly breaks into English which gives me more context, and HR speaks a bit slower. I’m usually able to understand 15-40% of it and I’ve noticed a lot of the words I’ve learned from Anki show up so it reinforces the learning. They’re both comedians so the bits I’m able to pick up usually crack me up.